To My Body: “What Do You Remember?” (Three Answers)

1.
Life is simple
or life is not simple

To the simple, life is simple
and not simple to the not simple

(nor the simple of the not-simple
& the not-simple of the simple)

2.

The simple cannot see the not simple
because it is not simple—
this is not their strength

The not simple cannot see the simple
because it is not simple—
this is not their strength

3.

Life is simple
or life is not simple

Life is not simple.
Not-life is simple.

Not-life is death.
Simple is death.

Diagnosis without (yet) Prognosis*

Schiller wrote at a time when the artificial (cultural) division something along the lines of “Heart” versus “Mind” in an understanding of human experience was exerting visibly damaging (cultural) consequences. He wrote in his Letters to describe how to reintegrate those divided faculties and thus reintroduce the possibility of wholeness to people. Hence, one consequence of the division of “heart” and “mind” is:

While in one place a luxuriant imagination ravages the hard-earned fruits of the intellect, in another the spirit of abstraction stifles the fire at which the heart might have warmed itself and the fancy been enkindled.

Friedrich Schiller (1795), “Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man” (Letter no. 6).

*The new discipline is to read 10 pages per day. And if I encounter thoughts or notions I want to memorialize, they go here for the foreseeable future.

Stupidity & Ignorance

The principle difference between stupidity & ignorance is this: stupidity does not know how to think or feel its way out of a trap; ignorance doesn’t recognise the trap. Ignorance might, then, sometimes buttress survival; stupidity never.

Whether stupidity is educable, it always calls for our patience, compassion, & help; ignorance, in contrast, always calls for mutual enlightenment. Ignorance is overconfidence in being right in one’s limited knowledge; stupidity is not knowing how to right that.

A Change of Taste*

What is it that we behold upon the national (if not quite yet the world) stage at present? In the place of the good of governance, which is still requisite for organizing the best life for all life and which can yet still be occupied by those holding or avowing the highest ideals, we see a spectacle of venality embarrassingly impoverished of imagination, imagination timidly limited and too realistic in aspiration, aspiration crippled by laziness, discouragement, and its inevitable low morale, and the morals and principles of those who, in a complete abjuration of sensibility, act likes fugitives from a burning city seeking only to rescue their own miserable property from the devastation. But audience to this repellant and disheartening panorama are the peanut gallery of optimists, pessimists, criminals, and victims alike, each with their own characteristic hopes and Schadenfreude, their sadism and despair—most of all, their expectation (whether hopeful or otherwise) that the satirical buffoons occupying the tragi-drama of the national stage won’t play to type and will act instead, and measure up, as other figures, indeed, the gods (or the arch-demons) as one’s taste runs. With no wind in the sails of our boat, one might puff at the cloth until unconscious from hyperventilation, or sprawl snarkily at the starboard throwing barbs at the first for their stupidity. Meanwhile, the supercilious cryptid aft asks, “Yes, but who made this boat and these sails?” and the mystic at the bow, “Or this ocean?” The classic howl of the peasants over the stupidity of the Lord rings as loudly as ever and with just as much suspect consolation, but so also the irresponsible disdain of the Lord at the vulgarity and ignorance of the masses—he should know, he’s one of them. If, then, an ugly and banal managerial laminate now obscures by its tacky wallpaper and recycled waste-wood an otherwise collective spirit better devoted to the destiny of a society in its governance, if cardboard cutouts painted with abject Latex are now dragged about the stage on only semi-invisible strings in place of full living beings with a sense of responsibility to the governed, then the tired question of “demand or supply?” once again comes to the fore. The reactionary averred, “Toute nation a le gouvernement qu’elle mérite” [“Every nation has the government it deserves”]. And yet, since “Politics is the entertainment wing of capitalism,” it then behooves us to look at our entertainments and media in total. It seems people are desperate to separate what they watch, read, and consume as somehow compartmentalized and unrelated to their political life (including their withdrawal). That’s a politics itself—one commensurate with the rise of the reading-class luxury of the early bourgeoisie—so that if social change will be realized a change of diet and taste is prerequisite, what is stomached must first change.

*The new discipline is to read 10 pages per day. And if I encounter thoughts or notions I want to memorialize, they go here for the foreseeable future. This was inspired by Friedrich Schiller (1795), “Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man” (Letter no. 5); my phrase “who, in a complete abjuration of sensibility, act likes fugitives from a burning city seeking only to rescue their own miserable property from the devastation” inspired by and lifting from him.

Toward Statelessness & Society*

In a time of much needed social change, the past reminds us:

We must therefore search for some support for the continuation of society, to make it independent of the actual State which we want to abolish.

–Friedrich Schiller

This support is not to be found in the natural character of Man, which, selfish and violent as it is, aims far more at the destruction than at the preservation of society. As little is it to be found in his moral character, which ex hypothesi has yet to be formed and upon which, because it is free and because it is never apparent, the lawgiver can never operate and never with certainty depend [i.e., even if you could, morality should not be legislated]. The important thing, therefore, is to dissociate [selfish and violent] caprice from the physical and freedom from the [independent and unlegislated] moral character; to make the first conformable with [an unselfish and nonviolent] law, the second dependent on impressions [rooted in a genuine, not false, morality]; to remove the former somewhat further from matter [Nature] in order to bring the latter somewhat nearer to it–so as to create a third character which, related to these other two, might pave the way for a transition from the [current] realm of mere [political] force to the [actual and legitimate] rule of law and, without impeding the development of the moral character, might serve rather as a sensible pledge of a [hypothetical] morality as yet unseen.

Friedrich Schiller (1795), “Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man” (Letter no. 3).

If words like morality and law seem off-putting here, these are the fruits of their abuse at the time and in the two centuries since Schiller wrote, where immorality tends, as Mencken wrote, to mean “someone having a better time than you,” and law is not about justice but “just us.” What Schiller is describing (call it aspirational if you must) are legitimate ideals for morality and law (rooted in Freedom). But imputed idealisms aside, Schiller still offers a heuristic for abolishing the State while maintaining Society, a condition that is necessary in some sense if anarchy will not mean the sort of total collapse and typically post-apocalyptic chaos, terror, and cannibalism depicted in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. For Schiller, that way forward (that bridge between injustice and an approach toward a genuine third-character social order) involves aesthetic education. And he’s more than enough of a deep thinker on this problem that we could do well to at least hear him out on his proposal.

*The new discipline is to read 10 pages per day. And if I encounter thoughts or notions I want to memorialize, they go here for the foreseeable future.

Switching Gears: Marriage as a Psychological Function*

First it was passion, then it became duty, and finally an intolerable burden, a vampire that battens on the life of its creator.

–CG Jung

)It will seem at the outset, perhaps, that the title and pull-quote forewarn unavoidable doom but it’s really simply a warning, something to look out for. Does anyone really warn you, “You know, about halfway through life, you’re going to have to switch gears and re-approach Life all over again from a different angle” (if you want to continue to experience growth, satisfaction, and a sense of significance)?

The ways that lead to conscious realization are many, but they follow definite laws. In general, the change begins with the onset of the second half of life. The middle period of life is a time of enormous psychological importance. The child begins its psychological life within very narrow limits, inside the magic circle of the mother and the family. With progressive maturation it widens its horizon and its own sphere of influence; its hopes and intentions are directed to extending the scope of personal power and possessions; desire reaches out to the world in ever-widening range; the will of the individual becomes more and more identical with the natural goals pursued by unconscious motivations. Thus man breathes his own life into things, until finally they begin to live of themselves and to multiply; and imperceptibly he is overgrown by them. Mothers are overtaken by their children, men by their own creations, and what was originally brought into being only with labour and the greatest effort can no longer be held in check. First it was passion, then it became duty, and finally an intolerable burden, a vampire that battens on the life of its creator. Middle life is the moment of greatest unfolding, when a man still gives himself to his work with his whole strength and his whole will. But in this very moment evening is born, and the second half of life begins. Passion now changes her face and is called duty; “I want” becomes the inexorable “I must,” and the turnings of the pathway that once brought surprise and discovery become dulled by custom. The wine has fermented and begins to settle and clear. Conservative tendencies develop if all goes well; instead of looking forward one looks backward, most of the time involuntarily, and one begins to take stock, to see how one’s life has developed up to this point. The real motivations are sought and real discoveries are made. The critical survey of himself and his fate enables a man to recognize his peculiarities. But these insights do not come to him easily; they are gained only through the severest shocks.

CG Jung (“Marriage as a Psychological Function,” Collected Works 17, ¶331a)

I suspect I’m going to want to just post this entire section by Jung, but here’s a link where you can read it all yourself if you want (starting from paragraph 331a, p. 193).

*The new discipline is to read 10 pages per day. And if I encounter thoughts or notions I want to memorialize, they go here for the foreseeable future.

On Aesthetic Education*

It is just this technical formulation, which reveals the truth to our understanding, that conceals it once again from our feeling; for unfortunately the understanding must first destroy the objects of the inner sense before it can appropriate them.

Friedrich Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of [Mankind], Letter no. 1

*The new discipline is to read 10 pages per day. And if I encounter thoughts or notions I want to memorialize, they go here for the foreseeable future.

I’m Thinking of a Far Too Trivial Title for This*

Ponder some recent examples of socio-psychological overreach [no, not the ex-45]:

The fear that most people naturally have of the inner voice is not so childish as might be supposed. The contents that rise up and confront a limited consciousness are far from harmless, as is shown by the classic example of the temptation of Christ, or the equally significant Mara episode in the Buddha legend. As a rule, they signify the specific danger to which the person concerned is liable to succumb. What the inner voice whispers to us is generally something negative, if not actually evil. This must be so, first of all because we are usually not as unconscious of our virtues as of our vices, and then because we suffer less from the good than from the bad in us. The inner voice, as I have explained above, makes us conscious of the evil from which the whole community is suffering, whether it be the nation or the whole human race. But it presents this evil in an individual form, so that one might at first suppose it to be only an individual characteristic. The inner voice brings the evil before us in a very tempting and convincing way in order to make us succumb. If we do not partially succumb, nothing of this apparent evil enters into us, and no regeneration or healing can take place. (I say “apparent,” though this may sound too optimistic.) If we succumb completely, then the contents expressed by the inner voice act as so many devils, and a catastrophe ensues. But if we can succumb only in part, and if by self-assertion the ego can save itself from being completely swallowed, then it can assimilate the voice, and we realize that the evil was, after all, only a semblance of evil, but in reality a bringer of healing and illumination. In fact, the inner voice is a “Lucifer” in the strictest and most unequivocal sense of the word, and it faces people with ultimate moral decisions without which they can never achieve full consciousness and become personalities. The highest and the lowest, the best and the vilest, the truest and the most deceptive things are often blended together in the inner voice in the most baffling way, thus opening up in us an abyss of confusion, falsehood, and despair.

CG Jung (“The Development of Personality,” Collected Works 17, ¶319)

*The new discipline is to read 10 pages per day. And if I encounter thoughts or notions I want to memorialize, they go here for the foreseeable future.

The Bower-Soul

1.

As I read of the life of Christ
and his temptations in the desert
I think, “How irrelevant.”

My bower-soul awakes instead
in trackless forests, a knight
moving inerrantly through the Green.

Like Christ, there is no fear—
the confidence of plate-mail
and puissant arms sustains

when you know you are immortal
and cannot die; it’s enough only
to fear no conflict or suffering.

Yet it is berries not sumac, not sand but dew,
and branched canopies over horizons unending,
it is pools not dunes, and fens not oases
that well up my soul’s infinite well.

2.

See! The knight strides, head-in-clouds
his profile veiled then reappearing
in the breaks between the vines and old growth

the thickets draw in close,
the branches overhead obscure
the sun and moon alike

and the nettles rasp the plate
as near feral spirits peer,
what peerless companions!

Where is he going? Who cares?
The forest is vastless deep;
there’s anything to do.

He walks on daydreaming,
leaves on pauldrons, stems on greaves
pinecones crunching under the sabatons,
and berries’ juice on his chest-plate

3.

In his soul, a certain peace not seen
by those who watch, his light sturdy
lantern for the deepwood still

until night falls and only his eyes
beam radiant lances forward
over the moss-soft sounds of his footfalls.

In the stillness now are gone
the mud-pooled boot-print
the crackle of dry twigs, the trace.

The green bramble’s parting sighs back
now re-corseted in spiders’ cords
jeweled by fog’s soft diamonds.

In the moss-bed, the shapes of bodies
unfurl and dissipate their heat.
Evening comes on inevitably,
and the Green Lord surveils his domain.

Ubuntu. Or No Person is an Island,*

not even the pioneer undergoing a creative illness with the feeling of utmost isolation. Creative minds are indissolubly bound to their social environment, and also to a more restricted specific human context that comprises their masters, colleagues, friends, pupils, critics, and even adversaries. It is impossible to distinguish in a [person’s] thought what is truly theirs and what has been suggested by those around them or what they have read. The power of cryptomnesia should never be underestimated, nor that of the stimulation produced by contemporary events.

Henri Ellenberger (1970). The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry, p. 893-4.

This is about giving credit where credit is due in contrast to masculine boastfulness and the pretensions of an auteur. But not only credit where credit is due but also acknowledging that “my” ideas are always “our” ideas, realizing that I am a spokesperson not an imposter imposer, albeit possibly for a point of view only unconsciously shared or dimly realized. Never forgetting, “I am, because Others are” (ubuntu).

*The new discipline is to read 10 pages per day. And if I encounter thoughts or notions I want to memorialize, they go here for the foreseeable future.